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“Don’t matter. Just because you gave Knox a good fuck doesn’t mean you’re one of us. Get in.”
I jerked free before he could release me—even that reflected my control issues—and climbed into the cabin. I squeezed next to Brody. Mason got in the passenger seat while Grant was driving.
As the truck sped out of the lot, I was lost in the bubble of the most awkward silence I had ever experienced in my thirty-some years of life. And I had spent most of my life surrounded by pea-brained thugs.
All I could do on the twenty-minute drive was bounce my leg and click my nails together. The sound comforted me without truly realizing it—until Mason twisted around and snarled to knock it off.
To my extreme surprise, Brody came to my defense.
“Back off, man!” he snapped. “What’s your problem these past two weeks? I barely recognize you anymore.”
That set Mason off like a spark to a flame. “You don’t recognize me?!” His voice was too loud in the cabin. Grant winced. “I’m the only one thinking straight here.”
Brody made a face like, Are you serious, bro? “You’re losing it, Ledger,” he said calmly but firmly. “Grief is eating you alive just like it did when Will died. You got better when Suzie got to you, but now you’re crumbling again.”
Mason clearly hated being called out by the doctor but Brody didn’t let his Vice President argue.
“Yelling at Miss Bates?—”
“Caroline,” I corrected.
Brody gave me a look that was neither friendly nor unfriendly. “Caroline,” he said slowly, as if trying to decide if he even liked calling me by a name that wasn’t psycho bitch or daddy’s little destroyer. “Yelling at her isn’t going to fix shit. Yelling at anyone isn’t going to fix shit.”
His tone hardened. “So everyone bottle their fucking personal feelings and focus on the mission. We’ve been waiting for this day for years. We can’t fuck it up just because you’ve got anger issues, Mason. None of us have to trust Caroline—we just have to trust in our mutual end goal.”
The truck filled with a different kind of silence—painfully tense.
I locked glares with Mason, and he was still looking spitting mad, but there was an exhausted edge to his eyes now. He slouched in the seat and crossed his arms. It wasn’t admitting anything, but Brody’s words got him back on track.
I stiffened when Brody addressed me. “Those look bad.”
“What?”
“What do you think? Your wrists.”
I followed his sharp line of sight to my arms resting in my lap. My rope-burned wrists hadn’t improved much over the last week. I had borne the constant pain, pretending it didn’t exist, focusing on more important things—like fucking a biker repeatedly and planning patricide.
But even I had to admit I shouldn’t have let them go so long without genuine care. They were ugly as hell, the skin red and raw.
“They’re fine,” I lied. “I splashed some hydrogen peroxide on them to clean them after I got out. It was all Nate had in his trailer.”
“Nate?” Mason exploded. “You’re on a fucking first name basis?!”
“Mason,” Brody snapped, which apparently was his don’t-mess-with-the-doc voice, because Mason turned back around and slouched again. “Hydrogen peroxide?” he said to me in annoyed exasperation. “You splash peroxide on something like this, you’re not disinfecting—you’re cooking the damn skin. I personally equipped that trailer with medical supplies. Did he really forget the first-aid training I gave all these bastards? Let me see.”
“I’m fine,” I insisted, recoiling when he reached for my arms.
Brody gave me a deadpan look. “Don’t even try to lie to a doctor. Hold steady, Toke.”
Without giving Grant a warning, Brody slid the window open to the bed of the truck. Wind funneled into the cabin as he fit his arm and shoulder through it to pull a first-aid kit through.
He shut the window and set the kit on his lap with a satisfied grunt. “Never forget the band-aids.”
I watched him prep wound care, but wasn’t really seeing. I was reliving the entire office warehouse nightmare—the pain, the helplessness, the anger, the fear. Watching my father walk away, leaving me with Vane. Watching glass rain down on us as Knox brawled with the merc?—
“If you’re trying to escape your past,” Brody said, startling me from my dark thoughts, “healing physical wounds helps heal the internal ones.”
I stared at him. He stared back unflinchingly but with genuine concern. Do no harm was a doctor’s principle, which was contradictory to Brody’s secondary line of work.